My observations on the Decay of Language have made it to the Independent, albeit in a somewhat truncated and mysterious form, ie leaving out the bits about No 10’s spelling incompetence and not making it clear that the opening passages were not by me but from a reader.
Still, the main point is conveyed to the Indy‘s erudite army of readers.
Fame. At last.
Perhaps written English is going to mutate into three streams.
A ‘high’ stream written by an elite able to master English vocabulary and grammar to the level currently seen in eg the Independent.
A ‘medium’ stream used by people writing formal messages to each other (eg a Prime Minister writing to Parliament), full of what we now would see as mistakes but clear enough for the job.
And a ‘low’ stream of text speech and general linguistic anarchy for SMS-ers, Twits and Facebookers and all the other armies of people communicating online, who just want to say it in as few key-strokes as poss where prcsn doesnt matter ROTFLMAO.
Ooops. It’s happened already.
The question is, how much emphasis and effort are to be put into learning High English at schools? If none, how will it survive?
And will there be anyone around to teach it?
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